A Star Is Born: The Making of the 1954 Movie and Its 1983 Restoration (14 page)

Hart's description of his Esther/Vicki is deceptively similar (except for
the age) to the original: "Middle twenties, petite, not really wide-eyed, but
bordering on the naive. Sincere. Easily roused if her principles are questioned. The sort of person of whom people always say, when the occasion
warrants, they knew she'd make it." But the similarities end there. His
Esther/Vicki is a dreamer, but without goals, imagination, or ambition. She
has a vague hope that "someday a big record agent will let me make a
record, and it'll become a hit and I'll be made." But even that she laughingly shrugs off with a "but that'll never happen." She is shocked that
Maine would think she was wasting her time singing with the band: "I'm
doing fine, Mr. Maine, just fine.... Do you know how long it takes singers
like me to get a job like this?" She has no parents, no family. She sketches
her life thus: "I remember my first job singing with a band . . . then
one-night stands clear across the country by bus . . . putting on nail polish
in the ladies' room of a gas station ... waiting on tables. That was a low
point-I'll never forget it, and I'll never, ever do that again." She is a
creature of urban rootlessness; she lives for only one thing: "I had to sing
... somehow I feel most alive when I'm singing"-a sentiment that could
easily have come from Garland herself. The song titles and the lyrics were
all carefully fashioned by Gershwin to work with Hart's dialogue in explaining and illuminating Esther/Vicki's psychology: "Gotta Have Me Go with
You," "The Man That Got Away," "Someone at Last," "It's a New
World." They chart the emotional development of the character as surely
as the speeches and the action advance the surface manifestations of the
story.

This Esther is completely vulnerable, lacking in self-confidence, uncertain of her own talent, convinced that without Maine she is nothing. At
the end she overcomes her insecurities, her need for Norman as the mainspring of her life; in freeing herself of him, even as she becomes "Mrs.
Norman Maine," and in finally recognizing her own talent and her worth
as a human being, a star is born.

As for Norman Maine, with his sturdy, rock-bound name, he is one of the more complex and completely tragic heroes of the American cinema:
an amalgam of Sydney Carton, William Wellman, and silent-film director
Marshall ("Mickey") Neilan. The Sydney Carton came from David 0.
Selznick, who had been under his spell since reading A Tale of Two Cities
as a preteen. Wellman, of course, included elements of himself as well as
incidents that had happened to him: the night court sequence, wherein
Maine is verbally assaulted by a judge, happened to Wellman almost word
for word. Marshall Neilan, one of the biggest and the best directors of the
late teens and the twenties; an alcoholic, he had been brought down by his
arrogance, outspokenness, pugnacity, and undependability. Neilan was the
inspiration for the character of Max Carey, the director in Cukor's 1932
What Price Hollywood?

When Carey metamorphosed into Norman Maine, it was with overtones and shadings from the John Gilbert/John Barrymore sagas. Gilbert's
career as a major star had ended almost overnight with the advent of talkies,
not because of his voice, which is the legend, but because of poor choices
in stories and roles. Sound rendered his character, the flashing-eyed impassioned lover, ridiculous, and his consequent inability to make himself popular in any other role led to his abrupt decline. Gilbert later married the
young actress Virginia Bruce, and her career forged ahead while his ended
in a paranoid, alcoholic daze. Gilbert's death of heart failure at age thirtyeight came in January 1936, just as work began on the screenplay of A Star
Is Born.

There was more of John Barrymore in Max Carey than there was in
Norman Maine, but the story of a romantic idol who dissipated his gifts
and his career through drink had a ready parallel in the continuing tragedy
of John Barrymore, who had been reduced to reading his lines from cue
cards. The sanitorium sequence, where Niles calls on Maine to offer him
a small part in a film, came from a similar visit George Cukor made to
Barrymore, who had had himself committed in an effort to "dry out" and
go back to work. Cukor related the details of his trip to Wellman and
Selznick, who were working on the screenplay, and they wrote the scene
into the final version.

This original Maine, while a charmer, has an element of coarseness about
him. He nearly disrupts a concert at the Hollywood Bowl; he has very little
regard for other people and is prone to fisticuffs and boorish behavior; he
proposes to Esther at a boxing match while chewing gum and egging on
the fighters. When he drunkenly interrupts Vicki's speech at the Academy Awards to make one of his own, it is to tell off the assembled multitude
("Fellow suckers ...") and to denigrate the award his wife has just received:
"I got one of those things once; they don't mean a thing." His saving graces
are his sense of humor, his charm, and the fact that, as he explains to
Esther, "no matter what else ... I appreciate lovely things"-a line which
took on poignant believability when Fredric March quietly spoke it. In
March's hands and under Wellman's direction, Maine never reveals any
self-doubt or introspection. We know nothing at all of Norman, even where
he came from-not a hint of the inner turmoil that causes his alcoholic
binges. The closest we get to any evidence of self-awareness in Maine is
in the token he hands to Oliver Niles: "Good for Amusement Only." His
sole function, dramatically at least, is to be the deus ex machina-the fairy
godmother who makes everything possible for Cinderella. When she is
"born," so to speak, there is no longer any reason for his existence; and so
he does what all good gods do: he walks into the ocean and disappears,
thereby assuring his immortality.

Moss Hart's version describes Maine as "a `movie star' personified.
Superlative good looks which bear more than just the mark of a photogenic
face.... There is evidence of a deep inner turmoil." The 195os Norman
is an intelligent, semicultured man, with no visible roots or background.
Perceptive and proud, he feels a deep loathing and contempt for the
manner in which he makes his living and for the hypocrisies of so much
of "our industry," as he mockingly refers to it. He is constantly starring in
vapid romantic dramas and empty action films with titles like The Enchanted Hour, The Black Legion, and Another Dawn. The correlative
Hollywood career was that of Errol Flynn, who had reigned supreme at
Warners for almost twenty years; his relationship with Warner was very
similar to Maine's with Niles. Flynn had been released by Warners because
of the very situation that faced Maine: drinking, undependability, and
slipshod performances in lackluster, unimaginative variations on the same
old stories. But Flynn was acutely self-aware, and so is Hart's Maine. "I
know myself very well," he says in the script, "and I'm right near the
fighting stage.... Unless I get my way, I begin to break up people and
things." Later, he warns Esther that she must not be in love with him: "You
come too late ... I'm a bad lot, I destroy everything I touch."

"I never grew up," Flynn stated in his autobiography, and a childlike
quality is another thing that separates the new Maine from the 1937
original; it's emphasized by his manservant's remark "He'll smile in his sleep in a minute ... like a child" ("Like a child with a blowtorch," observes
Matt Libby) and reiterated near the end by Vicki, who tells Niles: "He
looks so helpless lying there ... like a child." Maine's childlike vulnerability
is most evident in Hart's rewrite of the proposal sequence, which he places
on a recording stage, where Vicki is singing "Here's What I'm Here For"
while Norman watches on the sidelines. During a choral break, she joins
him and they have an extended conversation, inaudible to the camera but,
unbeknownst to them, recorded by an overhead microphone. During the
playback of the song, their dialogue is revealed to everyone-Norman's
proposal, Vicki's refusal, her reasons ("You're irresponsible ... you drink
too much")-much to the couple's embarrassment, particularly Norman's.
His humiliation is assuaged only by Vicki's change of heart: "That's much
too public a proposal. I accept."

Hart carries this new dimension of Maine further in the Academy Award
sequence, where instead of displaying anger and hostility, Norman humbles
himself by begging the assembled moguls for a job ("I made a lot of money
for you gentlemen once ... Now I need a job"). But it is earlier in the story
that Hart makes his strongest contribution to an audience's sympathy for
and understanding of Maine. When he hears Esther sing at the Downbeat
Club, he is struck by her talent, and tells her, "You're a great singer.
... You've got that little something extra that Ellen Terry talked about.
... She said that's what star quality was-'that little something extra.'
Well, you've got it." Later, in trying to convince her to quit the band, he
says, "A career is a curious thing. Talent isn't always enough. You need a
sense of timing-an eye for seeing the turning point, of recognizing the big
chance when it comes along and grabbing it. A career can rest on a
trifle-like us sitting here tonight. Or it can turn on somebody seeing
something in you that nobody else ever saw, and saying, 'You're better than
that-you're better than you know. Don't settle for the little dream-go
on to the big one.' " He instills in Esther a belief in herself and gives her
the confidence and courage necessary to pursue the "big dream"-stardom.
He may have started out on the make, but his speech to her and his offer
to "see what I can do for you at the studio" make his intentions understandably honorable. Even while Esther is suffering greatly after not hearing
from him, his frantic efforts to locate her from his location at sea and upon
his return make him much more sympathetic than the 1937 Maine, for we
can see that he is truly anguished at his inability to make good on his
promise.

When he does find her, he carefully shepherds Esther through the perils
of the Hollywood jungle, taking an active hand in getting her cast in her
first major role, watching carefully in the shadows of a sound stage while
she rehearses, nervously offering comfort and advice on the way to the
preview of the film, and finally taking quiet pleasure at the vindication of
his belief in her after the triumph of this initial public screening. He is
protective and concerned but wary of becoming involved, and only does so
because of the intensity of Esther's love for him: "I've done all I can for
you. You've come along the road with me as far as you should.... Forget
about me." When she protests "Don't you know that ... nothing could
make me stop loving you?," he warns her: "You've come too late." But she
rejects this: "I don't believe that.... It's not too late-not for you, and
not for me." "Don't say that, Esther-I might begin to believe it." To
which she responds passionately, "Oh, believe it! Please believe it!" She
finally convinces him to take the chance, much as he had convinced her
to believe in herself.

All of these refinements and additions by Hart to the character of Maine
make his suicide ultimately more poignant, for we know how deeply he
cares for her, and how proud he is of her talent and her success.

Hart finished his rewrite of the screenplay in early March 1953 and immediately dispatched a copy to Luft and Garland. Luft recalls: "In my heart
I wasn't so sure this was the right thing to do, to take this wonderful picture
and see if you can make it into a musical. Mixing music with drama-I
didn't know if it would work or not." But according to Gerold Frank, Luft's
fears were quickly allayed:

... The night a delivery boy brought the ... script ... to them ... it was
well after midnight and the entire house was asleep save for Judy and Sid.
... They settled themselves in the downstairs den, reading it together. When
they finished, they looked at each other and simply lost control ... hugging
each other, crying, laughing.... When Sid had first thought of Star, it had
passed fleetingly through his mind, "What a twist: the rise and fall of a great
male star, yet with such overtones of Judy's own story ..." He looked at her
and said, "We're going to have a great picture, Judy."

While Hart had been laboring in Palm Springs, production of new films
had come to a virtual standstill in Hollywood as confusion over the threedimensional and CinemaScope formats paralyzed the decision makers.

The start of filming on The Robe at loth Century-Fox on February 23
had been carefully and nervously noted by the other studios, which adopted
a cautious watch-and-see attitude. Warners, meanwhile, had gone full
speed ahead on its first film using the Natural Vision 3-D system, a remake
of the 1933 thriller Mystery of the Wax Museum, retitled House of Wax.
It had begun filming on January 19 on carefully guarded sound stages,
under the direction of one-eyed Andre de Toth, the only director on the
lot who could not truly perceive depth, another of Jack Warner's little
jokes. The picture was finished on February 21, at which time Warner
ordered a studio-wide production shutdown until after the picture's April
1o premiere, when the financial impact of 3-D could be more accurately
determined.